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| Igor Stravinsky |
When the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland Whittaker Library consulted students
recently, we heard that students find it most useful to receive targeted
information about topics being studied or written about.
GENERAL HELP WITH
RESOURCES FOR MUSIC HISTORY 3 ESSAY
... So we’ve been looking at the Music History 3 essay questions to
see how our online resources could help you.
Just about everything
you need is here, available 24:7
FINDING MUSIC
- You can often find a score online. Use your computer’s snipping tool to copy
little excerpts for examples. We
subscribe to Alexander Street Press Classical Scores Library (accessible online
wherever you are), and Library Music Source (accessible on site). You probably already know about IMSLP (the
Petrucci library), too.
- If a piece of music has an English title as
well as its original title, search both.
FINDING INFORMATION
- You can look for information in Groves
Dictionary – it’s part of Oxford Music Online.
- You can also find useful information on
JSTOR. Be clever with your searching –
if the essay is asking you to link concepts (eg Liszt and literature), make
sure your search terms reflect that.
- If JSTOR hasn’t got what you want, don’t
give up. Try RILM (music abstracts). HINT: The advanced search will get better
results than the simple one! The SmartText
searching option is good for finding adjacent words in a phrase. If you only read material in English, or
another language, you can factor that into your search, too.
- There’s nothing wrong with older
literature, if it informs the question you are answering. However, do remember
that opinions may have changed, if an article is very old indeed!!
- Search keywords in our catalogue. Start with a precise search (eg the
composer’s name and perhaps the piece)
then broaden it if you don’t get what you need.
If you don’t find the right information under a composer’s name, try MUSIC HISTORY - and maybe the century
you’re interested in. If you’re
off-site, limit your results to e-books to see if there’s anything you can read
online.
FINDING RECORDINGS
- You can stream music by Naxos or Alexander
Street Press Music Library. Check our
e-resources page. http://www.rcs.ac.uk/about_us/libraryandit/databases/
ELECTRONIC JOURNALS - PREPARE TO BE AMAZED
- There are also plenty of electronic
journals on the e-journals page. Start
by looking for suitable journals under the List of Music Titles. http://www.rcs.ac.uk/about_us/libraryandit/e-journals/
